Fashola: Some states enjoy almost 24 hours power supply

Babatunde Fashola, minister of power, works and housing, says some states in the country now enjoy “almost 24 hours” of electricity supply.

Speaking on Wednesday at a programme on Channels Television, the minister said the increase in electricity supply is as a result of the increase in transmission capacity.

Fashola said even as the transmission grew with about 8,100 watts as of December, the distribution networks have been the major challenge in making power available all the time.

He said the federal government is ready to invest N72 billion to install transformers and expand distribution.

“Sitting down here I can tell you some states that have almost 24 hours – Kebbi, Yobe. Some have five, some have 10 and there are still outages,” Fashola said.

“The generation capacity is also increasing. It is a value chain where the distribution is not matching up the available power and from time to time, there are slacks.

“The short term goals are incremental power and stable supply in some places.

“The government has decided that as 40 per cent holder of everything in the distribution of power, we have our programme to invest N72 billion which will involve installing transformers and all of that.”

Fashola said the federal government would bring solutions to the challenges in the power sector.

“We created a metre access provider regulation. What it does is to create a new plan of investment programme. We manufacture, produce, supply and install metres and fill the gap the distribution companies cannot raise capital to fill. They cannot do so alone, they must do so under a procurement policy with the distribution company,” the minister said.

“We are applying many solutions at the same time. So when we were talking about how much megawatts is being used, we have created a new page which will bring solution.”